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Trouble in the Ipswich Town centre for Roy Keane

On Tuesday night Roy Keane made an appearance in the dock at the Ipswich Town AGM. Though the club is controlled by the millionaire business man Marcus Evans, 12.5% remains in the hands of ordinary shareholders and once a year they have direct access to the manager. For a man trapped in a show trial Keane is in an unusual position: everybody is painfully aware of the charges and acutely conscious of the sentence he faces but in football guilt can have a transient quality. The charges he faced on Tuesday might not have the power to condemn him a month from now.

In that sense time is both his friend and his enemy. The media were excluded from the meeting but shareholders reported that at one stage Keane said he had "five or six weeks" to save his job. It was unclear whether this was a club deadline or